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All Rise...

The Charge

"I take you, Dollar Bill, to be my wedded husband." / "He was
very kind, giving you a nice young mother."

Opening Statement

Director Edgar G. Ulmer's career (see today's Precedents column), can be
looked upon as having five different phases moving from his early days in 1920s
Europe, through his phase at Universal from the mid-20s to mid-30s, to New York
and a variety of low budget work for various ethnic and industrial concerns in
the late 1930s, back to Hollywood and PRC in the first half of the 1940s, and
finally a mixture of work mainly for independent producers over his last two
decades. Moon over Harlem (1939) is a musical melodrama with an all-black
cast and is a good example of his New York period while The Strange Woman
(1946) starring Hedy Lamarr was made during the time of Ulmer's PRC contract,
although the film was actually released by United Artists. Neither film can be
rated as among Ulmer's best, but the combination illustrates well Ulmer's
strengths in extracting something worthwhile out of virtually nothing as well as
the theme of lives based on unwise or unhealthy decisions.

All Day Entertainment, in association with the Edgar G. Ulmer Preservation
Corporation, has begun a series of DVD releases under the title "The Edgar
G. Ulmer Collection." The first volume is a double bill of the above two
titles.

Facts of the Case

Moon over Harlem—Dollar Bill (Richards) marries widow Minnie who
has a daughter Sue at college. Although his new wife believes him to be an
honest businessman and faithful husband, Dollar actually heads a local gang
involved in the rackets in Harlem as well as being a philanderer. Daughter Sue
is engaged to Bob, a local political organizer intent on cleaning up Harlem. At
one point Bob and Dollar clash and Bob is only saved when Sue promises her
stepfather Dollar that she will never see Bob again. Sue's unhappy relationship
with her stepfather reaches a climax when he makes a pass at her and her mother
blames her for it. Meanwhile, pressure is being applied to Dollar by outside
interests to increase his gang's take from the Harlem rackets. Family
estrangement, Harlem nightlife, and murder all converge in the film's
resolution.

The Strange Woman—Jenny Hager is the daughter of a man whose
wife abandoned him. Her only real friend as a young girl is Ephraim, son of a
prominent storekeeper with lumber interests named Isaiah Poster in Bangor, Maine
in 1824. After she has grown into a very attractive young woman, she is beaten
by her drunken father for taking up with a visiting sailor. Her father dies and
the town elders decide that the best thing for Jenny would be to marry Isaiah
Poster. She agrees to go along with this, but it is soon evident that her real
interest is in Poster's son Ephraim, who by this time is away at college in
England. She persuades Ephraim to return home and once there declares her love
for him and eventually urges him to kill his father. In the meantime, there are
problems in the lumber business and Poster's lumber foreman John Evered enters
Jenny's life. A complex relationship develops between Jenny, Ephraim, John
Evered and his intended, Meg Saladine, which leads to deceit, jealousy, and
death.

The Evidence

By far the more rewarding of these two films is Moon over Harlem and
that is ironic because it represents probably the smallest budget and shooting
time of any film Ulmer ever directed. In contrast, The Strange Woman
probably was the most expensive picture Ulmer ever had; certainly on paper it
had the best all-around cast he ever had to work with (Hedy Lamarr, George
Sanders, Louis Hayward, Gene Lockhart).

Moon over Harlem features an all-black cast, the majority of whom had
little-to-no acting experience. Ulmer was engaged to direct as a result of his
knowing Donald Heywood who had written "The Green Pastures" and
"Porgy." The film was pretty well ready to go when Ulmer came on board
and a contract was in place for it to play on the black circuit in the South.
After being given a couple of weeks to rehearse with the cast, actual shooting
was completed in only four days—two in a studio which was apparently an
old cigar warehouse, and two on location such as in a nightclub in Harlem where
filming had to be done after two o'clock in the morning. The film was shot in
16mm and all done with short ends, i.e. left over bits of film as short as a
hundred feet, so that the camera had to be reloaded every couple of minutes.
These sorts of conditions called upon all of Ulmer's ingenuity.

The result is an entertaining film that displays obvious respect for its
actors. There is none of the forced black stereotyping that can be so painful
now when viewed in the major studio productions of the day. Certainly the story
is simple and some of the acting is amateurish, but there is an earnestness and
freshness about it all which more than compensates. Typically for him, Ulmer
jumps right into the story with Dollar Bill and Minnie's wedding, skipping over
any establishing background. That Minnie's decision to marry Bill is an unwise
and unhealthy one (in this case it proves to be the ultimate in unhealthiness)
soon becomes evident and the motif seen so often in Ulmer's best work is
established. The lack of elaborate sets and night-time location filming also
allowed Ulmer's love of unusual camera angles and shadows to shine through.
Ulmer was a lover of all music and that too was evident here in the enjoyable
jazz music used throughout. Featured are jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet and a
band called Christopher Columbus and His Swing Crew. How can you resist a group
with a name like that!

The Strange Woman is something else. Ulmer was still under contract
to PRC when Hedy Lamarr decided that she would like him to direct her in her
first film after the end of her MGM contract. The film would be released by
United Artists and Ulmer was loaned out by PRC to do the job. Ulmer, as a
consequence, continued to receive only his normal salary of $250 per week while
PRC pocketed $1500 or $2500 (depending upon whether you believe Ulmer or his
widow). He was rather bitter over this and it led him to not renew his PRC
contract which was expiring soon thereafter. The resulting film though just
wasn't Edgar Ulmer; it's overblown and overacted, mainly in the case of Hedy
Lamarr. Lamarr probably appreciated all the close-ups she got, but one tires of
her sideways glances which constantly telegraph her thoughts and actions.
Hayward and Sanders are both good, however. Oh, one can see some interesting
framings and camera angles and the script with its emphasis on Lamarr's
character and its increasingly out-of-control nature probably appealed to Ulmer,
but it's almost as if he had so much to work with that he didn't need to be
inventive, so just settled for a standard approach. There's a very obvious use
of back projection near the end that one likes to think would have been much
more interestingly handled had a lack of resources forced Ulmer to think up some
more devious way of getting the effect across.

All Day Entertainment's DVD presents these two features on a single side of
the disc. Judged by the standard of DVDs of other B&W films of the time, the
transfers presented here have definite problems. The history of Moon over
Harlem with its 16mm, short-ends film stock origins prepares us for its
look. The original elements are long gone and all known copies of the film are
damaged and scratched, so the resulting DVD looks and sounds very rough even
though it's from a combination of the best material that could be found. The
image exhibits frequent vertical scratching, blemishes reflecting original
negative damage, brightness changes, and dark scenes that are very problematic.
The sound suffers from intensity changes, background hiss, and occasional
mis-synchronization. But it is workable and I recommend this title. It's
certainly better than I've ever seen it look before and likely the best it ever
will be, given its limited market and the nature of the existing source
material.

The Strange Woman is better looking than Moon over Harlem. The
DVD has been mastered from a restored 35mm print provided by the Cinematheque in
Paris. There is some scratching and speckling of the image, but for much of the
time, especially in well-lit sequences, it looks fairly good with clean whites
notably. Night-time scenes are more problematic with shadow detail often poor.
The sound is acceptable although there is a short section of missing audio
(perhaps 20 seconds or so) at the end of chapter 17 due to stretching of the
film. This is noted on the DVD's inside insert. I would rate this to be at best
a barely average presentation of a mediocre film, and were it on its own,
probably would not recommend the DVD.

In addition to the two features, All Day has added a selection of stills and
artwork from The Strange Woman as well as a interview with Edgar Ulmer's
widow, Shirley Castle Ulmer. Although short (only 6 or 7 minutes), the interview
provides some interesting background to both of the films. Finally, there is
four-page insert inside the DVD case which provides a nice career profile of
Ulmer as well as listings of the generous scene selections for both films.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

I have to reiterate that anyone expecting a crisp DVD presentation of these
two titles will be disappointed. This DVD is about preserving the best versions
still extant of two little-known films. Those "best" versions are very
far from current-day film standards, especially in the case of Moon over
Harlem.

The Strange Woman is the lesser of the two films on this DVD. There
are problems with some of the acting and despite occasional flashes, the
direction is simply workmanlike. Were it on its own DVD, given the image and
sound quality presented, I would likely not be recommending it.

Closing Statement

All Day Entertainment is doing a great service to classic film enthusiasts in
its presentation of the films of Edgar G. Ulmer on DVD. Volume 1 of this
collection is a double bill of two little-known titles, one of which (Moon
over Harlem) is a minor gem. There are obvious problems with the transfers
of both these titles, but All Day has apparently gotten the best out of the
source material possible. In addition, they've added some interesting
supplementary material which makes the whole package a rather attractive one.
This first volume is a great opportunity to sample Ulmer's work under two
entirely different sets of conditions and whets our appetite for future
volumes.

The Verdict

Case dismissed. All Day Entertainment receives the court's commendation for
its fine efforts.

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